Break from Brunswick: East Gippsland.

With the teaching year at an end, we left Melbourne for a few days. On the way to Bairnsdale, we stopped as usual at the Art Gallery in Sale, and this time we saw a wonderful exhibition of the Donald Thomson collection of Arnhem Land bark paintings.

But here I want to write about Jacarri Cottage at Goongerah. This is about seventy kilometres north of Orbost, in a beautiful location on the edge of the Errinundra National Park. The main reason I wanted to stay there was because I am a supporter of Environment East Gippsland and I had heard so much about Jill Redwood.

Brickworks

Walking or driving around Brunswick you can see many kinds of bricks. It is a suburb of bluestones and bricks. One of the biggest recent residential complexes is called Brickworks, and it is a redevelopment of the former Hoffman Brickworks which opened in 1862 and produced bricks and pottery until 1990.
In an amazing aerial photograph from 1920 the deep pits are evident. Now they are parks.

The time of lilacs

 

There are some flowers that only appear for a short time. Lilacs are an example. The pale lilac variety only blooms for a few weeks in October and then they go brown and quickly fade away. The white and dark purple variants extend the season a bit.

Tales of Sydney Road

This is not the tale I wanted to tell about Sydney Road, a road so full of places and stories. 

Windows on Weston

Recently I called in at Northcity4 studios in Weston Street. Inside a former factory or warehouse, with its translucent roof and exposed beams, there is a wonderful studio space for a number of artists and craftspeople. Looking at their window, now transformed into an art work, it occurs to me, why do so few of the windows on this stretch of Weston serve their original purpose of looking in or looking out? As it is, one can do neither with many of them. Some are boarded over, some are painted over. But they are all intriguing.

Bobby Gatto moves to Brunswick

One day Bobby Gatto came to live with me again. Bobby is my cat. He had been living with my daughter and her two gigantic dogs so his life was not always peaceful. However I was anxious that he might not adapt to the urban environment, having been a suburban cat who lords over vast expanses of gardens and peaceful neighbourhood streets.

I was wrong. 

Hope Street bus service

The old man walked tentatively towards the speaker. He held his walking stick aloft, to gain attention, but it looked as if he was advancing to attack, albeit in slow motion.

It was a beautiful spring afternoon and the speakers had been addressing the gathering about the impending closure of the Hope Street bus, Route 509. They talked about how the bus line serves the community, how essential it is, linking two major roads, the railway line, the medical, sporting, shopping and other public facilities. The densely populated area, is set to become even more densely populated with more high rise development. The area needs not more cars, it needs the bus service. For the elderly, the bus is an essential service, and the drivers are their friends.

One of the speakers, a retired bus driver, guided the old man to the centre of the circle. The MC, local resident Shane, introduced him as Joe, a man who has lived in the area for all of his 91 years.

The light in winter: Mirabella

It has been a long winter in Melbourne this year, and even though we are almost at the end of August, the blossom month, it still feels like winter. “It’s a miserable day” is Vince’s assessment of the climate, both meteorological and psychological. But then again, he lived for many years in the tropics.

I like to look for bright spots even in the darkest days.  The many varieties of wattle blaze their beautiful yellow in gardens, reserves, parks and along the Eastern Freeway as I drive to work every day.. Surely the great spirits of nature fashioned them so as to counteract the greyness of Melbourne.

And then, there is Mirabella.

Who is Emily George?

There is a little street off Lygon Street in East Brunswick and off this street there is a little lane. A little dilapidated sign indicates it is called Emily George Lane. It is a picturesque laneway, not that I have walked down to the end yet. The sign is affixed to an old Victorian terrace house, painted a bright yellow. On the other side of the laneway entrance is a brick wall with a large array of street art.

Autumn in Brunswick

 Yin and Yang. The black bluestone blocks of the kerb and the paperthin leaves coming to rest, piling up in ever shifting mounds on the streetside. The blocks hewn once and for all from deep gorges in the ground along the banks of Merri Creek, the leaves only one season old and already cast adrift.

This afternoon the radio played “Autumn Leaves” sung by Nat King Cole. As I drove home I thought of songs and poetry inspired by autumn. Although yesterday was the first of May , when spring explodes in Europe (Karel Hynek Macha’s famous lines always linger in my mind when this day comes along or when I hear the date said: Byl prvni Maj, byl lasky cas –the first of May, the time of love… ), here in the southern hemisphere it is the time of the shortening days, the oblique rays, the melancholy shadows and timid light.

Even my students, compelled to learn poems about the heavy fruits, the dying leaves and the clattering of the flags, must have got an insight... perhaps.

Blak Dot Gallery

A few months ago I was showing Olga some of my favourite places on Lygon Street East Brunswick.  We had not seen each other for some time and were talking non-stop, catching up with news of our families. Olga was telling me about her daughter in law who was considering doing post-graduate work on the relationship between members of the indigenous community in Melbourne and very recently arrived immigrants. And then a strange thing happened....

Rear Window

I recently watched this Alfred Hitchcock movie on afternoon television. Of course the highlight was Grace Kelly’s dresses, including her very 1950s negligee (who remembers the crucial line in adult movies when the lady says to the male visitor “let me just slip into something more comfortable”), but what amazed me even more was the very idea of apartment windows opening onto an interior courtyard.

The Brunswick Trugo Club

The sign on the gate says it all: Elderly Citizens. A recent article in the Age Good Weekend described Trugo as “Seniors Game on”, however it seems a great game for children. Certainly on the fine Sunday afternoon when I attended a social event at the Brunswick Trugo Club, the children were revelling in the lush green grass of the pitch and enjoying hitting the rubber wheel and generally making up their own rules. 

Retail Therapy

Yesterday I was feeling quite blue so I went for a walk around my usual circuit: Lygon Street to Glenlyon or further and then through the back streets. However, I was prompted to take not only my camera but also my entire purse, including credit card. Walking staunchly past the icecream shop without stopping for consolation, I headed for Paul’s bookshop. Resisting the urge to buy a $10 copy of “The German Spirit” by Watson, I headed further north past the bright lights of Mirabella showrooms.

Graffiti and signage

Where to start? In this densely built-up environment, there is visual communication, in the form of writing or pictures, everywhere. Recently I read the book: “Characters: Cultural stories revealed through typography” by Stephen Banham, who I believe is also a Brunswick resident. (There is a great article on the book and part of an interview at this link to TheDesign Files blog.) Reading Banham’s book and admiring the photographs reinforced my view that it is not only what is written, but how it is written, that is fascinating and revelatory.

Often, the revelations are just in the eye of the beholder. Where one finds a scribble, a sign. What one has been thinking about, what one is looking for. Here are some examples:

Bohemian Brunswick: of course it did not take me long to discover this piece of commissioned graffiti art in a laneway along Sydney Road.

Lygon Street bookshops

“What can one do with old encyclopedias?” I asked Paul, proprietor of the Red Wheelbarrow bookshop. He confirmed my fears that they go to pulp. It seems such a waste: all that stored carbon in the paper and all that accumulated knowledge and information in the contents. Not to mention the historical snapshot that some of the writing styles and biases capture. In the end, an old set of Britannica became the stumps that ensured that my furniture stored in the garage of my old house did not get waterlogged when water came through the garage after a heavy downpour. Their sheer physical bulk was their only remaining use.

Break from Brunswick: Hobart

I grew up in Tasmania, on the North West Coast, in a small town called Penguin. Then we moved to Hobart, where I attended Hobart Matriculation College for one year and then went to University of Tasmania in 1972. I completed a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in German and Political Science and then did an Honours year in German. Then I left.
Re-visiting Hobart is like exploring past times, both my own and those of the island.

Glew Street recycling

I happened to have my camera when I came across this most recent example of Brunswick style recycling. The grand old armchair had clearly seen better days. There were alarming bulges in the seat, and the wood, although solid, was battered. The attached sign read: “Free to good home. Speculation for accumulation. Invest a few dollars and then resell at a profit.” Obviously, the message had resonated: a young man was already loading it into his truck, with help from the former owner. “It went like that”, said the older man, clicking his fingers.

Lygon Street East Brunswick shopping precinct: Gelobar

Amarena, Anguria, Malaga, Torrone, Fragola, Lampone…. These are not exotic destinations, but just some of the flavours of the icecream available at the Gelobar on Lygon Street. I like to call in there when I go for a walk, and just get a kiddy cone for $2. I still haven’t worked my way through even half of the varieties. On a hot day, there are queues waiting to buy the delicious gelati, and the tables on the sidewalk and in the cool interior are packed. In the colder months, the beautifully crafted cakes are probably more popular. They are a feast for the eyes as well as the tastebuds. Their website is also a feast.